Drifter
by Kpasa
Summary: Sabé reflects on her past, present, and future, and gives way to broken thoughts. As the relationships of her past fall fall apart, she ponders on new ones in her perpetual adriftment. Incredibly long oneshot. Sobiwan.


"_No coward soul is mine_

_No trembler in the world's storm troubled sphere"_

_Emily Bront_ë

**Drifter**

_Her world began in the first sharp taste of her memory. Nourished by stardust and raised in child-like infinity, she grew in the constant embrace of love and freedom. Wholly ignorant of the harsh sting of reality, she had flourished as wick thrives in budding thickets of time._

_That was then; this is now. _

…_His mother had hair the colour of Naboo oak and a laugh that could be heard three moons away. This was all he knew. It was all he wanted to know. For what pain was there in one's absence if one was not known? _

_Her mother's hair was the harsh shade of Tatooine sand, one of the few comforting reminders she clung to in this lonely place._

'_Mama'_

_But of course, that was then, this is now. _

* * *

The cold night air exaltedly swept through her as she propped her legs outside the window and drew herself into its frigid embrace. Releasing her gentle grip on the frame, she tightened the heavy shawl further around her petite form, settling into its warmth. She was standing on a small angular platform overlooking their land. The platform was several feet off the ground, and, though she was not frightened of heights, for stability she stepped back against the solid wall behind her and sunk down.

Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin against the sharp boniness of her knees, tilting her face to the landscape. She felt the soft rings of her hair curl as languid tongues of wind dreamily arched through each strand. As the rest of the world heaved in a breath for which an exhale never appeared, a small sigh escaped her lips, and she lost herself to broken thoughts.

She couldn't grasp the one point where she would be unable to lie in bed and not feel his presence beside her, the very solidity of his body anchoring her soul to his. He had abruptly left the warmth of the covers an hour previous, the crease in his forehead a tell-tale sign of his awareness of a disturbance in the force. She had propped herself on her elbow as he wearily draped a shirt over his head, and sleepily watched him as he tried to decipher the energy around him. The young Luke Skywalker was in some form of distress, although by her lover's slow reluctance to leave the room she quickly ascertained that the danger was of no serious consequence and let her head collapse on her pillow. As her eyes had become weighed down by tiredness, she vaguely felt the rush of energy sweep by the curvature of her face as he had let his hand linger above the invisible hairs of her porcelain cheek. And then he was gone. In vain, she tried to fall back into the warm seduction of her dreams, though she soon realized that the attempt was futile until he was back in her embrace. She would rather wait all night for him then sleep alone once more.

She could envision how she looked now, tucked away in her sandy cocoon as the world sped past her. Her rich hair had fallen loose from its braid, the strands floating in the aftermath of twilight. Her cold, amused smile softly arched in sad ecstasy. The shadows of the night stole the virtue from her eyes, the dark orbs gazing into a drowned landscape. The beauty of her face marred only by the weariness of a knowledge that had years ago settled into the very bark of her bones. Her hand sanguinely rested on the bump that protruded from her womb, distractingly circling a slender finger in spherical motions.

The sky above her was dark as space itself, but in the distance above the horizon it was streaked with a midnight blue whisper, blue as dark as the deepest depths of a rugged sea. The dunes sharply floated in black contrast, her eyes trailing soft edges into jagged plunges of their form. Planetary rings reflected brightly off two full moons that seemed only feet away. Gales of wind roared in the distance, falling into a still silence as they crept along the edges of their land. Their far-off shrieks tucked away in the fold of her ear. The sand whirling in circular silhouettes was dark against the dimmed night, blue kissed by the moon's cape. With sultry ease, the black night seductively crawled in a spherical berth, encompassing the sky with a chariot of stars in tow.

It was when she was still a child, in the days when she was known for herself and not as a false Queen, that her mother whispered to her the tales of her people. She spoke the tales of the beginning, murmuring the ancient prophecies for the old unanswered questions. A child curled into a ball, fantasizing of ancestors who had yet to garner the imagination to escape their planet and enter the unknown. Thousands of years previous, they had emerged with the quietest of entrances; all of them born drifters, explorers of a primitive world that they could not possibly understand. She dreamt of fire, of torches and lights that were once considered godly. Where colourful caravans would tremble alongside the land, in which early pioneers laced their vivid webs of myths despite being chained by torturous ignorance. Where wise-men would stare up into the night, gazing into unthinkable vastness; where spinning orbits and gaseous stars and the swirling tongues of perpetually changing galaxies were unimaginable. And so they gazed, and they dreamt, and they skilfully wove tales and legends as answers to escape the borders of their mortal coils. For how else can one live in a world where one is doomed to die?

The sky here was vastly different from home. In Theed, the lights of the city would cast a yellow mist over the night. In the cascade of flowering architecture and towering structures, she had been blinded by lights; this solitary desert, however, was blinding her with stars. Beyond the blue-licked horizon settled the heavy groan of night's slithering form. As dust floats before it settles, so did the witching hour as it gently pirouetted its petal-like feet on the constantly shifting sand of this arid moor. Looking past the faint outline of her eyelashes, she let the night sky envelop her wholly and completely. It seemed appropriate that emptiness was black in appearance; the mere vastness between suns to sun seemed to reflect the chasm that crouched furiously in her soul. Calm descended upon her as she gazed at the countless clusters of white and blue stars that hung ever so gently, and dripped off the night like honey.

She never truly considered it until she had absconded to Tatooine- the fact that space had finally been conquered, that there indeed was a way to escape to the stars. Though her ancestors may have expected something slightly more divine, a seat in the house of the Gods perhaps, she never gave it a thought. She remembered the decrepit ship she had been able to purchase with her meagre savings, part of her hoping it would self-destruct halfway there. There she was, traveling in the driver's seat of a silver bucket spit out from Naboo's very own earthly resources, voyaging light-years in a millennia of time under a few hours, encompassed by the whispers of distant solar systems and stars that were equally as far away as they were on land. When she had looked out her window, she had seen that there weren't any other shades but the truest black and white, yet it wasn't until that very moment that she considered how odd it was, that she was up here when she was meant for down there. She was of a generation that had conquered its end, with no rewards to reap. Was infinity an abyss? Nothing more? A universe meant merely to spit out life and snatch it away? It was a plain landscape for which the future held nothing but mere solitude.

_We came to die_, she had once thought with resignation.

The myths and tales that the ancients had conjured up so many years ago had suddenly become pitifully futile, and it was at this moment that she knew that to survive she had to erase the past from her soul and learn how to dream of a different future. To somehow put the people she had loved behind her. To yet again discover how to rise from the ashes.

The snatches of broken thoughts momentarily ceased as she wrapped her body closer into herself, a line of confusion etched into her forehead. She recalled the snow-blanketed fields of her childhood, the white dust replaced by the dunes of desert sand that currently clung stubbornly into each strand of hair. She remembered how when the snow fell it stole all sound from her surrounding existence. She blankly gazed around herself, her breath becoming still. Here there was no snow to thieve the sound, but it had disappeared anyway. The length of sky billowed around her, silencing all with the grandiosity of its presence. As the world ensconced itself in a cacophony of stillness, time slowed imperceptibly, ceasing to exist and dissolving in the confines of its own thread.

She jolted into awareness as she felt a flutter wisp along her neck. She arched her head to see the window curtain floating along the gentle breeze, the lace borders rising on each current. She smiled softly, thinking of all the unrelenting insistence it took to persuade him to set aside his practical nature and purchase the fabric for her. It was the only thing of value in their possession, other then each other, as its delicate nature was terribly unsuited for his decorative motif of "bare, exceedingly-plain essentials". They had been in the market when she first came upon the fabric, and had let her fingers skim over the merchants tables in a dream-like daze before she came upon something so utterly soft she had to glance down. It was in that moment that she had to stop and collect herself. Flashes of a single memory had sped throughout her mind, and she saw herself as a child, watching her mama sew herself a dress of an identical material. Her mother had once placed her love in those simple acts, and in remembrance to this woman she had bought the fabric. He had laughed at her afterwards, his warm eyes watching her pitiful attempts to make a dress, to make _anything_, before she gave up in frustration. The next morning she had awoken to a daybreak breeze, and to the edges of perfectly sewn curtains that hung beautifully from the window frame, that lace that playfully tickled her nose. She recalled the utter happiness that swept through her as she had turned her head to meet his, and how he had closed the space between them. He had stretched his lean body along her length, and while he laughed into her skin and his eyes twinkled with smugness, she had blinked away her tears to this decadent awakening. These were her new memories to complement her new life, to cherish and tuck away. As the coarse sand forced its delicate weaves in a fleeting waltz, she played with the edges with dancing fingers. The lace had already begun to fray under the harsh sun and the grating desert elements, decaying away like almost everything else she loved.

A deep hollowness swept over her as she realized she had no idea where her mother was buried. A blinding ache bloomed in the deepest core of her body, rendering her cold. There was nothing more to her mother then jaundice-stained recollections of hair and of laughter. The woman that had raised her and loved her with a hold as tight as only a mother can give became no more then a vague shadow of her past. For once she could sympathize with the young Anakin Skywalker. Neither of them was destined to be dutiful offspring, merely accepting these childhood figures as a means to an end. For indeed that was the purpose of childhood, to be succumbed in the net of innocence before unknowingly escaping into the madness of reality.

It pained her to think that somewhere along the way her mama had disappeared; the memories had drifted away before she had even realized it, and she became numb. Yet, there was still more. How could she have known, when she was so young, that she had so much more to lose. She had lost more than her childhood; she had lost her very purpose.

She was nine years old when she had first encountered the future child Queen. Their lives had been inevitably entwined from the beginning. They were both born into Naboo aristocracy, and though they had attended the very same galas and parades and societal events from the very moments of their births, they had never before encountered each other. It wasn't as though she hadn't heard of the illustrious Amidala Naberrie of the mountains; no child bred under two galaxies over could avoid hearing about her, much less ignore the comparisons that no doubt ensued. Those who had known her would often comment on 'a remarkably silent child" whose astute behaviour could make Senators tremble. A girl not only blessed with such perfection in appearance and a quiet demeanour but who carried the additional burden of bearing a tongue sharp as glass and a mind so shrewd it was only fit for politics. No other child could possibly measure up, much less a gangly tomboy with an uncanny knack for knockout punches.

It was when she was a child that she found herself in the sea-side village of Tauros, to celebrate the eve of the celestial festival in which Destiny would play her hand. This particular day was meant to mark that fate of Nabooians with the Solar Kingdom, to celebrate it by setting the wooden wheel ablaze and send it whirling to the oceanic mouth. She remembered little of that day, other then the moment she had stumbled upon her future best friend. She could vaguely recall running away from the festivities, clambering over hills and rocks to eagerly reach the seaside. The sand had burned with bright intensity and shone pure white despite the darkness of the night. The stormy sky had coloured into a ruby shade of midnight blue, dark mauve clouds sweeping the heavens in a hungry frenzy. Three moons hung in a pendant-like stance in pedestal formation, sprinkling their reflections on the glimmering diamond-cut ripples in the ocean. Space and sky intertwined into one. She remembered herself as a child, clearly gazing out into this lonesome sea. There had been a sailboat out that night, a stark silhouette bobbing in the calm serenity of solitude. She had tried to imagine this sailor, this isolated figure who seemed to lack a destination. A drifter of consciousness. She recalled the utter stillness of that evening, much the same as the present, and the same soft breeze that lacked any sound.

In that gentle wind, there drew a force that compelled her to turn her gaze to the side, to rest her eyes on what she found. Half dragged out of the sea was the wreckage of a broke-down rowboat, imprinted in the tide as would a smile in a portrait. What caught her glance, however, was the slight figure that rested in its shattered bow. It was merely a petite girl, donning a white muslin dress that fluttered amicably in the breeze. She had never before encountered the Princess of Theed, but some inner voice that dwelt inside instantaneously had known who this child was. She was a girl who was designed by the Gods to be a Queen, and certainly was born with the pre-approved mannerisms. Nobility of character cannot be taught, and it shone brightly from this girl. Bemused, the notion struck her that this child had run away from the festival as well and must have craved the sight of the sea just as much as herself. No other thoughts had dared enter her mind, and as the rings of moons spun in ecstasy, and the stars giggled in expectation, she slowly made her way to the bare shell of the boat. Sitting on the bench with her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her palms, the girl had dug her naked feet into the white sand that had spilled into the boat, pink shells imprinted with fossilized fish overlapping her toes.

With a confidence she was unaware she possessed, she set out to instigate a formal introduction between young aristocrats. With an expression akin to awe, she could not tear her gaze away as she edged closer to the rim of the ship. The girl had skin as pale as pearls and a nose that could have been carved off any ancient royal. She was incandescently lovely. For some odd reason, she remembered she had shyly fixated her eyes on Amidala's hair, marvelling at how the darkness of it resembled the night sky. Small silver swallows with their pearl-encrusted centres wove through the silken strands by fine spyderwick thread which had glistened brightly against the stark contrast of her hair. It was at that moment that they locked eyes and her heart told her to smile, and so she had done so. She had been mildly afraid that she would be dismissed by this young royal, and be marked off as yet another transient in the drama of her everyday life. But the princess smiled back, her serene eyes that normally held trouble and peace transformed by warmth. With an amiable friendliness, the girl scooted aside to make way for this new companion, her shyness painfully evident in her curious eyes. As the evening stretched on, distant planets gazed sorrowfully at the two figures with their feet tucked into the sand, sombrely mourning for the distant future that would soon surface. The fatal clutches of their imminent tragedy respectfully lowered its crown for the time being, permitting innocence to sweetly grow.

And that was when her life blossomed, her worldly knowledge growing with branch-like strategy. It was in the palace courtyards that she had trained to become a fighter, invoking every ounce of strength that dwelt inside her to become all that she could. Alongside dozens of other girls, she was taught the art of combat, her skills surpassing all in her league. Though her body would grow numb with weariness, and her soldier instincts would often lash out in the most embarrassing instances, she knew it was but a price to pay. She was trained to fight for Naboo, to use her proficiency in the war against iniquity, unaware that one day it would all be proven futile. And through it all, she was being educated in the finery of ladylike habits and etiquette. She had garnered the ability to walk with novels placed on her head, her posture a defining characteristic. She knew how to intricately braid hair with five ornate strands and knew what makeup would be more appropriately intimidating in senatorial chambers. She learned the importance of walking in the shadows, a wallflower endowed with a bowed head. She became a tall lily with retiring petals, walking with the dignity of a Queen who was nothing without her crown.

In her blindness of everything other than her training, she was ignorant of the rumours. She was entirely unaware of the whispers that rung throughout the corridors regarding the uncanny appearance shared by the newly elected Queen and her handmaiden-in-training. It was hardly surprising that (other than when she was finessing her skills or Padmé would be handling political affairs) the two were inseparable. It was of no surprise that the two practically became one and the same. Hiding away in stone-niches of castle windows, they would laugh and dream, light-heartedly exploiting those rare moments of childhood. Through the layers of stoicism and heavy, elaborate makeup, their friendship weaved gloriously throughout the palace courtyards. As her majesty's position in Naboo became swept by danger, Captain Panaka, the chief of Security Defence, glimpsed their shared appearances as an opportunity for a higher grade of protection. Her training thus extended to memorization of mannerisms and impersonating voice patterns, to the extreme disapproval of Amidala. Despite arguments over how devalued her own life would be if she did intend to become a decoy, she pursued the honing of these new skills.

Eventually their friendship did lovingly extend beyond the two of them as qualified Handmaidens were carefully selected to be placed in the Royal entourage. They were talented girls that had abandoned their families to protect a Child-Queen they hardly knew. As all their lives collided, their souls became entwined behind closed doors of political propriety. They were sisters of a courtly illusion, warriors masquerading as ladies; beautiful, unattainable temptresses with blasters tucked under their elegant robes. Relentlessly, they exercised and practiced, attempting to prepare their small world for the infinite abyss that inevitably waited. They would die for their Queen and martyr themselves for a higher purpose; no greater love existed beyond their palace walls. This tragic destiny would indeed become their fate, all lost and gone forever, albeit for one.

He was taking so eternally long. Child-like impatience welled up inside her, and she hurriedly scanned the distance. Though this distraction offered a momentary reprieve, she was soon caught in its net yet again. She often caught herself wondering, especially in light of her current condition, when had the past cease to be reality? All she knew was that in days succumbed by innocence, they had met.

It was under her willow tree near Theed Palace where they had first kissed, the canopy of stems falling like a drape over the two desperate figures who slowly merged into one. As their lives spilled into one another, she succumbed to the realization that this love, this union, would forever be hiding under willow trees. In the darkness, they had found each other, and it was in the dark that they would grow old together. The beautiful saga that they shared would only be known to the two of them.

She had settled into the warmth of his home (a hut that resembled more an igloo then a house) with a calm resignation, solemnly accepting the knowledge that one day she would die here, for the chapters of her life had closed, and she would fade away in a land that was not her own. But though her sadness briefly reigned, it was swept away by the assertive realization that she would _make_ memories here with him. The coldness of unfamiliarity was almost laughable when she first glanced over at his euphoric grin, a smile caught in disbelief at the mere sight of her nervous form lounging on his dented kitchen chair. His eyes, his blue eyes, clung to her like wheat dust that day and every day since, perpetually irremovable.

Theed… Gods, how she missed it. Beyond the feathers of fall's escape she had fled, the innocence of home destined to be a luminescent memory. There had grown an overwhelming fear inside of her, a dark realization that she did not have anywhere else in the Universe to go. It was the day of the funeral of the greatest revolutionary Queen Naboo had ever been blessed with, and all she wanted to do was fly away. She had crouched down, hidden behind a wreckage pile in the ships recently destroyed hangar, taking advantage of its abandoned state. She wrapped her arms around her legs and tucked her face between the dip of her knees, and for the first time since she could remember, she had wept. And like a child, she wept until she could be comforted, but of course, there was no one left. There was no one to reassure her, to calm her fears and to accompany her on this passionate, agonizing wave of loss. She was all alone in this vast world and had no one to fight for. For hours, she sobbed, her tears embracing the memories of each person she had loved and lost.

Her mother, whose image she could no longer recollect, but whose love was the backbone of her everyday existence. She wept for Captain Panaka, who dutifully and lovingly replaced her absent father and whose eyes would crinkle with pride in an otherwise passive face upon perceiving all her accomplishments. She wept, too, for Anakin, the wide-eyed boy with a soft-spot for beauty who once sincerely treasured the woman who would place her own life before his lover. Dormé, whose laughter and wit could soften the tension of any heart and always had a difficult time restraining her infectious giggles when she was chosen to dress the decoy. For Rabé, who would slyly wink at her whenever the younger Jedi had his head turned away. She cried for each of her handmaiden sisters, whose love wove a ring of friendship that would one day unknowingly be thrust apart. For Naboo, that the knowledge that this grand civilization that shaped her would become lost in the emptiness of the past.

But most importantly, she wept for Padmé, the Princess of Theed, a friend who had been kept so close to her heart that they became one and the same.

She could vaguely see what appeared to be a solitary star slowly moving across the night sky, skipping the surface with worldly ease. A single bright spot surrounded by millions of others, deceptive in its illusion of incandescent beauty. Disguised amongst its luminous companions, it could easily be mistaken as one more jewel of the heavens. It had to be fairly large; she could most certainly establish that. It was proudly sailing the night in the glimmer of stardust, and she followed its movements in captivation. By the speed of its movement and by its size, she ascertained that it was a destroyer ship on course for the next attack. Friend or foe, she no longer cared. It certainly wasn't headed for Tatooine; a small, politically unimportant planet would prove insignificant to the galactic battle that waged overhead. She stared at it nonchalantly in a solemn sense of loss. Her past ambitions sailed away in its wake. It was no longer her war to fight. Sad regret wafted throughout her as she felt entirely detached from the very cause she was raised to fight for.

Her eyes anxiously began trailing the sand-speckled swirls that lazily dotted the horizon. The night was drawing thin, and she shook with agitation. She wished he was here to erase every thought that wept in her core. Without him, she was nothing. She would be swept away by sand and wind, her history sifting through cracks of emptiness, the particles of her existence drifting out as quietly as it had entered. In this desert cocoon, in which every breath she heaved was as arid as the landscape she found herself situated in, she couldn't help but dwell on her own mortality. As the lone star sunk into sparkling clusters, she attempted to ignore how futile she felt in this useless body. She had abandoned her cause long ago to live a life she would never previously have imagined for herself. Inside this parched, scorched earth, time itself seemed to slow and increase. The average day would thrum with agonizing slowness, yet death always seemed to glint in the distance. She was lost in a seared sea that was unknown to her, floating in a space that attempted to clutch her legs and drown her at every opportunity. The billows of sand encroached like a coffin door, blowing sugary kisses for her sweetly slow decay. Here she was, in a mummified tomb of her own making, and still she didn't want to be anywhere else.

She lived in the colour of absence. Tucked away in her were shades of memories that had once thrived with vivid life in her everyday being but which now hung like rocks in her very core. She had lost everything that had once composed her very purpose, and for a brief moment she wondered if she had ever been truly innocent. Memories of laughter and of mothers and sisters and of comfort seemed so distant that she wondered if any of it truly occurred. She was a handmaiden without an entourage, with no Queen to escort.

She was a drifter in a universe that did not heed her breath, a vagrant of mortality who had no place to stand. She was a failure in the very intention of every molecule that composed her body; she couldn't protect them. Her sisters, her friends- they had all succumbed to death in the dusk of her failure. They had all died, one by one, nomads drifting away like sad smiles in a holograph. One after the other, they had left, until she was the last one. The _last _one. She was the last remaining Royal Nubian Handmaiden, her place once at the left hand side of her Royal Majesty; now her destiny in life was to be eternally left behind.

She hid her face yet again between the spaces of her knees, that recognizable unavoidable ache wracking throughout her soul. And _yet_, and _yet_, there grew a feeling she did not understand. It was a sharp sensation that first revealed itself in the purposefulness of her steps, a lingering awareness that time and space no longer existed. That nowhere in the vastness of the universe slung the corseted strings that always drew her back. The attachments of her past had flitted away, and she realized that she could go anywhere and everywhere, fearlessly walking into the unknown. Fear no longer existed, other then in her lonesomeness. She became free in the worst possible way, and the guilt that hungrily gnawed through her soul wrenched these thoughts away.

As the far-off dunes wept with plum-coloured grace, and the slumbering heaviness of night reigned, she caught a shadow in the distant horizon. Emerging softly from the landscape much like dust rising in the valley heat, the silhouette slowly took its wavy form.

She was once a child, a slip of a girl who had believed in limitless worlds and infinite, immortal love. A child who had once, long ago, been enshrouded by a cosmos of everlasting hope, dreams that had faded away in the cracked sands of the treacherous, endless passageway of time. The innocence of her dreams had died alongside Padmé, smothered away by the dark seeds of her failure. She was born into a world of political webs and bargained daughters, where sharpened tongues merely grazed the governmental deception, how could she fight what was already there?

As the cloaked figure drew nearer, she unknowingly spared the faintest of smiles, a kiss glistening in the corner of her curved mouth. Reserved for the only one who dared capture her heart, the only one who would never in an infinite number of years, leave her behind.

As the life inside her fluttered aimlessly, she laid a hand across her abdomen, and she felt her heart still. She had finally understood the Force. The life that bloomed inside of her held that knowledge with the very formation of its existence. The particles of stars and infinity and energy born of emptiness hung together by a thread. She could at long last recognize the beauty of the continuance of the soul of every living creature, and her veins thrummed with this ancient power. She would make her home in the valley of the lost, the valley of the forgotten, and would raise this child to one day escape its primitive bonds, its own tragic wayward fate, as her ancestors had done once before her. She would nurture this child amidst the stardust of a limitless imagination, as her own mother had done with her, so that one day it might find the strength to refuse the failure that continually trailed the innocence of liberty and love. She had a new outlook to sculpt, one in which she would gladly engulf herself. She nearly cried with the perfection of the future and the failure of the past.

The golden strands of daybreak coiled in writhing ecstasy around the tips of the darkened sandbanks. As he slipped his hood from his features, her soul fluttered in anticipation. The stoic weariness of his face relaxed into a boyish grin at the sight of her, and she was struck back to when she was merely a girl of sixteen playing a dangerous masquerade, a girl who had spared a glance that had altered her life forever. Caught frozen in a time where innocence still sprinkled seeds of hope. And she knew, as long as he was here, in this living presence that entwined the force, that she would never be forgotten. He belonged here, in the sand and the solitude and the futility of it all, but she knew no matter what he would follow her. She belonged in the sky, and would have disappeared there entirely if he had not pursued her numinous trek across the universe. And when her skin had first ignited with his, she realized the only place she wanted to belong was in his embrace. Apart, they were mere wanderers of weary pasts; together, they became world-movers.

He was still so far away, much too far, and yet she could already feel the steady rhythm of his heart quelling her trepidation. As scattered thoughts made way for grounded hope, she exhaled. Here she was, embarking on the exodus of her soul, and never before had she felt so… illuminated.

While her fears washed cleaned from her, she let herself become entangled in his eternal stare and felt her spirit rise. She knew then that this, _this_, would not die away.

_One day, child, you'll capture love, and it'll capture you, and you'll come to realize that… that sometimes… it's okay to surrender._

As his eyes drank her in and as his hand slipped over her stomach, she succumbed to the white flag, and her world became beautiful once more.

She was no longer the person she used to be, the once Decoy Queen, the born drifter, the perpetual cloud-mover; and in the remains of the night, she drew herself upwards and became enveloped by the world.

For she was Sabé Maberrie, and still she stood.

"_Do I dare_

_Disturb the Universe?"_

_T.S. Eliot_

* * *

Thanks so much for Deja Know I Been Lookin For Vu for having to beta this monster!

And let me just say, I'm very proud of all who attempted to read the single longest one-shot ever composed. Like, you really all deserve a high-five, seriously. I wrote the damn thing and I still can't get my head around the atrocity of its length. I mean, yea, I could have broken it up to make it easier to read, but with the way the paragraphs are written I did the best I could.

:) I do so love reviews... good... bad... doesn't matter... I just need my fix.


End file.
